Generative engine optimization is the work of getting your business named inside an AI answer, rather than ranked underneath one. The search happens in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini or a Google AI Overview, the model writes a paragraph, and it either mentions you or it does not. There is no page two to be on.
We priced the entire vocabulary on September 2, 2026 to see how real the demand is. Seventeen terms, 16,090 US searches a month between them, at an average cost per click of $33.58. That last number is the one worth sitting with. Advertisers are paying luxury-goods prices for a click on a service category that barely existed two years ago.
What actually changed
Classic SEO competes for a position in a list. The list has ten slots, everyone can see where they stand, and the whole industry is built on moving up it.
An AI answer is not a list. The model reads a set of sources, synthesizes one response, and names a handful of companies inside it. You are either in that paragraph or you are invisible, and there is no visible ranking to climb. That single structural difference is why the old playbook does not transfer cleanly.
Ranking tenth on Google still puts you on the page. Being the eleventh most citable source for an AI answer puts you nowhere at all.
The practical difference between SEO and GEOHow models decide who to cite
Three things drive whether a model names you, and only one of them is something the SEO industry already does well.
Being quotable in a single passage
A model lifts a claim, not a page. If your answer to a question is spread across four paragraphs and a video, there is nothing clean to quote. If it sits in one tight sentence with a number attached, there is. This is why statistics posts and definition pages get cited far above their traffic weight.
Being corroborated somewhere else
Models weight claims that appear in more than one place. A number that exists only on your site reads as a marketing assertion. The same number repeated in a trade publication, a forum thread and a competitor's comparison page reads as a fact. Digital PR stopped being a link tactic and became a citation tactic.
Being structurally legible
Schema markup, clean headings, a real published date, a named author, and an
llms.txt file at your root. None of this is glamorous and all of it moves the
needle, because it lowers the cost for a crawler to understand what you are claiming and
who is claiming it.
What we did not find
We found no reliable public data on how often any single AI product cites any single domain. Every vendor claiming a precise "AI visibility score" is modeling it, not measuring it, and the sampling methods are not published. Treat those numbers, including anyone else's benchmark, as directional.
What is measurable, and what this page is built on: search demand, keyword difficulty, cost per click, and our own Search Console. Those are the only figures quoted here.
Where the opening actually is
The head term is contested. Generative engine optimization carries a difficulty score of 54, which means established sites with real authority are already fighting over it. Chasing it first is the obvious move and the slow one.
Behind the head term the cluster is close to undefended. LLM optimization is 720 searches a month at difficulty 1 with a $30.11 cost per click. AEO agency is 480 a month at difficulty 9 and $39.16. Perplexity SEO is 90 a month at difficulty 0. These are commercial terms, priced like commercial terms, sitting effectively unguarded.
| Term | Searches/mo | Difficulty | CPC |
|---|---|---|---|
| llm optimization | 720 | 1 | $30.11 |
| how to rank on chatgpt | 140 | 2 | $26.51 |
| llm seo | 880 | 8 | $28.58 |
| aeo agency | 480 | 9 | $39.16 |
| chatgpt seo | 390 | 18 | $20.33 |
| geo agency | 590 | 24 | $40.60 |
| ai visibility | 720 | 26 | $38.82 |
| answer engine optimization | 2,400 | 36 | $32.53 |
| geo seo | 2,900 | 39 | $25.31 |
| generative engine optimization | 4,400 | 54 | $34.79 |
Want to know if AI search mentions you at all?
We run the check against ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews and send you what came back.
Get a free AI visibility auditThe playbook
- Find the questions buyers ask a model, not a search box. They are longer, they name a situation, and they usually end in a recommendation request. "Best CRM" is a search. "Which CRM should a 12-person roofing company use" is a prompt.
- Answer in the first sentence. Put the claim and the number at the top of the section, then explain underneath. Models quote openings.
- Publish something only you can publish. Original measurement gets cited because there is no alternative source for it. Everything else gets paraphrased from whoever ranked first.
- Get the number repeated elsewhere. One appearance is a claim. Four is a fact. Pitch the finding, not the company.
- Make the structure trivially readable. Article schema, real dates, a
named author, an
llms.txt, and headings that match the question. - Re-check monthly. Answers move without warning and there is no rank tracker that tells you. Ask the models directly, on a schedule.
What a citation is worth to you
Cost per click is a floor, not a ceiling: a mention inside an answer arrives with the model's implied endorsement attached, which paid traffic never carries. Use your own numbers.
AI visibility value calculator
Rough arithmetic, run in your browser. Nothing is sent anywhere.
How we measured this
- Date: September 2, 2026. Volumes move, so the date matters.
- Volume, difficulty and CPC: DataForSEO, Google US, English, pulled through OpenSEO. 194 keyword variants hydrated in one batch.
- Difficulty scale: 0 to 100, where under 30 is generally reachable for a site with modest authority.
- What is missing: no click-through data for AI answers exists publicly, so nothing here estimates traffic from a citation. The calculator above is your arithmetic, not our measurement.
The whole vocabulary is 16,090 searches a month and most of it is undefended. That is a window, and windows close.
Tested Media, September 2026 keyword studyCommon questions
Is GEO different from SEO, or just a rebrand?
The tactics overlap heavily and the goal does not. SEO wins a position in a list. GEO wins a mention inside a written answer. Sites that are strong at one are often decent at the other, because both reward clarity and corroboration, but optimizing for a paragraph is not the same job as optimizing for a rank.
Does GEO replace SEO?
No, and anyone saying so is selling something. Google's classic results still carry the majority of commercial search traffic. GEO is an additional surface, and right now it is a cheap one.
What is answer engine optimization?
The same discipline under a different name, 2,400 searches a month at difficulty 36. Some practitioners scope AEO more narrowly to featured snippets and voice answers. In practice the two terms are used interchangeably by buyers.
How long does it take?
Faster than classic SEO, because models re-read sources continuously rather than waiting on a crawl-and-rank cycle. We have seen citations appear within weeks of publishing. We have also seen them vanish just as fast, which is why the monthly re-check in step six is not optional.
